cesium Then we have cesium, the almost secretive metals market where it's next to impossible to get an exact price.
Cesium, was added to the critical commodities list by the USGS in 2018 and has several important uses in modern industry: It's increasingly vital to the oil and gas industry because it's used in cesium formate brines, which act as heavy mud for high pressure, high temperature offshore oil drilling. In other words, it lubricates drill bits and prevents blowouts.
Cesium isotopes are also responsible for the world's time standard. That's why they are used in atomic clocks for cell phone networks, the internet, Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and aircraft guidance systems. Cesium clocks are the most accurate known to man - accurate to about 1 second in 300 million years.
Cesium bromide is used in infrared detectors, optics, photoelectric cells, scintillation counters, and spectrophotometers, and the metal is also used in the glass for military-grade night vision goggles.
According to the USGS, the United States relied 100% on cesium imports in 2019. It's hard to get a world market price on cesium because there is not much trading of this strategic metal.
Strategic as it is, though, there are only three pegmatite mines in the world that commercially produce it: Tanco in Manitoba, Bitika in Zimbabwe, and Sinclair in Australia. Of these, Tanco and Bitika are no longer producing, and the stockpiles at Tanco and Sinclair are largely controlled by China. So, not only is there limited production - there are a very limited number of companies in the cesium supply chain.
One is Sinomine Resource Group Co. Ltd, based in China and now the owner of the Tanco mine and Sinclair's stockpiles, but a potential future competitor is now just emerging on the cesium scene: the relatively unknown Canadian junior miner, Power Metals Corp. (PWM.V, PWRMF) best known for its major hard rock lithium deposit in Canada.
This company is sitting on what is hoped to become only the fourth commercial mine of its kind in the world, with 100 percent ownership in the Case Lake property in Northeastern Ontario, where it has made a discovery of a deposit which includes some high-grade cesium mineralization.
The company discovered the pegmatites at West Joe Dyke in August 2018, intersecting high-grade cesium mineralization in six drill holes when it was targeting lithium instead. For cesium, it means the playing field could be strategically shifting away from what has already been lost to China and towards a new North American supply. The timing is as critical as the precious metals themselves.